Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 08/12/2009 6:33:19 PM PDT by reaganaut1
Since the mid-1990s, hurricanes and tropical storms have struck the Atlantic Ocean with unusual frequency — or have they? Two new studies suggest that the situation may not be so clear.
One, by researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, suggests that the high number of storms reported these days may reflect improved observation and analysis techniques, not a meteorological change for the worse. The second, by researchers at Pennsylvania State University and elsewhere, suggests that there were as many storms a thousand years ago, when Atlantic Ocean waters were unusually warm, as today.
The work does not suggest that people should stop worrying about whether global warming increases the threat of bad weather on the Atlantic Coast. But it offers new evidence that predicting what lies ahead may be difficult.
In findings reported this week in The Journal of Climate, the NOAA researchers, led by Christopher W. Landsea, say that several disturbances logged in 2007 and 2008 as tropical storms would never have been identified without satellite observations and new analysis techniques.
The researchers studied storms that played themselves out at sea, either in a day or two or over a longer period, from 1878 to 2008. By the late 19th century, they estimated, meteorologists missed perhaps two of the larger storms each year, and by the 1950s they were picking up on average all but one each year.
Yet the researchers estimate that a century ago, as many as 80 percent of short-lived storms came and went without ever being officially noticed.
Over all, they conclude, storm counts have not changed in the last century.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
global warming ping
The local weather-wonks can’t predict weather 24 hours out and the UN is now telling us that we have four months to save the planet........
My head hurts....
Meanwwhile, tropical depression 2 has formed west of Cape Verde in August of 2009.
I’ve been saying for years that if a storm formed off the coast of Africa, built up to tropical storm or hurricane strength mid Atlantic then veered of to the north to die, until recently, that storm never got named. Common sense. With satellites, now they name everything.
Saving the planet means handing over all your money and sovereignty to the UN. It has nothing to do with weather or climate.
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